Ava DUVERNAY

duvernay-ava Ava DuVernay is an Academy Award nominee and winner of the Emmy, BAFTA, Sundance, Image and Peabody Awards. Her feature film directorial work includes the historical drama Selma, which was the first film directed by a Black woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Her criminal justice documentary 13TH, made DuVernay the first Black woman in Academy history to be nominated as a feature director. She became the highest grossing Black woman filmmaker in American box office history with her direction of Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time. DuVernay’s critically-acclaimed limited series When They See Us, for which she wrote, produced and directed all episodes, received sixteen primetime Emmy nominations. Her series Queen Sugar became the longest running Black family drama in television history in its seven seasons. Winner of the 2012 Sundance Best Director Prize for her micro-budget film Middle of Nowhere, she was the first Black filmmaker to be awarded the top prize in the festival’s history. With her most recent film, Origin, DuVernay broke ground as the first African-American woman director to compete in the world’s oldest festival in its 90 year history. DuVernay amplifies the work of people of color and women of all kinds through her narrative change studio, ARRAY, winner of the 2021 Peabody Institutional Award. She sits on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, representing the directors branch in her second term, as well as holds positions on the boards of the Director’s Guild of America and American Film Institute.

Photo credit: Cheril Sanchez
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